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    <title>ShellCheck: SC2291 – Quote repeated spaces to avoid them collapsing into one.</title>
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    <h1>SC2291 – ShellCheck Wiki</h1>
    <a href="https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC2291">See this page on GitHub</a>
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    <h2 id="quote-repeated-spaces-to-avoid-them-collapsing-into-one">Quote
repeated spaces to avoid them collapsing into one.</h2>
<h3 id="problematic-code">Problematic code:</h3>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre class="sourceCode sh"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb1-1"><a href="SC2291.html#cb1-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">echo</span> Hello        World</span></code></pre></div>
<h3 id="correct-code">Correct code:</h3>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre class="sourceCode sh"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb2-1"><a href="SC2291.html#cb2-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">echo</span> <span class="st">&quot;Hello        World&quot;</span></span></code></pre></div>
<h3 id="rationale">Rationale:</h3>
<p>ShellCheck found multiple unquoted spaces between words passed to
<code>echo</code>. Due to the way arguments are interpreted and passed
in the shell, these will collapse into a single space:</p>
<pre><code>$ echo Hello        World
Hello World</code></pre>
<p>If you want to output multiple spaces, such as when creating a notice
or banner, make sure the spaces are quoted, e.g. by adding (or
extending) double quotes to include them:</p>
<pre><code>$ echo &quot;Hello        World&quot;
Hello        World</code></pre>
<h3 id="exceptions">Exceptions:</h3>
<p>If you're aware of this behavior and didn't want multiple spaces to
show up in the output, you can either remove the unnecessary spaces or
<a href="ignore.html">ignore</a> this issue.</p>
<h3 id="related-resources">Related resources:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Help by adding links to BashFAQ, StackOverflow, man pages, POSIX,
etc!</li>
</ul>
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    <p style='font-size: 80%'><a href="../index.html">ShellCheck</a> is a static analysis tool for shell scripts. This page is part of its documentation.</p>
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